My first impression of Molly Campbell, who I met on Twitter through mutual friends was “Damn, this broad is funny.” Over the years, I’ve discovered we’re both authors, artists, Ohioans, and proud grandmothers. Molly has a brand new novel out, her third,and I’m willing to bet it’s filled with humor, as well as heart. Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, says about Molly’s book, “Hilarious and full of heartwarming, familial honesty, Molly’s latest was a joy to read.”

I’m pleased to have her on my blog. Please welcome her!

Interview with Molly

Who is your favorite character in Crossing the Street, and why?

I love all my characters! They all are a part of me, or come from some sort of personal experience of mine. I have always loved precocious children, and so I think Bob is my favorite. I was a precocious kid myself, and I had a very best friend who was the next door neighbor. She was in her seventies. So I modeled Bob and Ella’s relationship after my own friendship with this wonderful woman who took me into her heart when I was seven. Her name was Rebecca, and so I used her personality for Ella, and her actual name for my narrator.

What inspired you to write this particular novel?

As I mentioned above, this was a story that I carried around in my heart about my own friendship as a child with an older adult. And as a huge fan of Anne of Green Gables, I always wanted to put my own spin on a story of a lonely and rejected little girl and the adults who saved her. This is it.

Is there anything that surprised you about the story as you were writing it? Did it take an unexpected direction?

I never saw Rowena coming. Originally, she was just a name and a plot device for getting Bob in Ohio to live with her great-grandmother, Ella. But she insisted on making an appearance and an impression. Her story just sort of sprang full-grown out of my fingers as I typed.

Since this is your third book, what do you now know that you didn’t when writing your first?

I wrote this book. Then I rewrote it—at least six times over a two-year period. I learned the importance of storyboarding, or outlining the plot in advance. And don’t get me started on show, don’t tell. I am TERRIBLE at that. I had to redo so many scenes because it is so much easier to say, for example: “She was horrified,” rather than SHOW what happened that caused the horror!

What do you hope readers take away from your book?

This is an interesting question, because what I hope readers will think after reading is so often NOT what they take away. Reading is such a subjective experience, and I think a book is perceived through the lens of the reader, not the writer. But somehow, I always seem to write about “family,” in whatever configuration it takes, and forgiveness, which we all have to learn how to give. I also have to work at least one pet into every book I write—this time it was a cat. My next book will feature a Pit Bull dog, since I absolutely adore my grand dog, a Pit named Susannah!

Anything else?

Writing a book is such a difficult process. I think that every author pours so much of themselves (notice the new, non gender pronoun!) into each manuscript that it takes real dedication and discipline to finish a novel and get it published. I salute all writers who do this, and I am so proud to be among this group of talented people who can call themselves authors.

Molly’s Bio:

Molly D. Campbell is a two-time Erma Bombeck award winning writer. She is the author of Characters in Search of a Novel, Keep the Ends Loose, and Characters in Search of a Novel. Molly is also an artist whose work is for sale in her online shop http://www.cafepress.com/notexactlypicasso. Molly also blogs at http://mollydcampbell.com/. Molly and her accordionist husband live in Dayton, Ohio, with their four cats.

About Crossing the Street:

This wasn’t the way Beck Throckmorton had planned it. She wasn’t expecting to find herself in her thirties writing erotica and making flat whites for a living while she stewed over that fact that her ex had wound up with her sister. She never saw herself living in a small suburban Ohio town with an octogenarian neighbor best friend. And she definitely wouldn’t have imagined the eight-year-old great-granddaughter of that friend turning her world upside down.

As summer comes around, Beck’s life is unsettled in every way. And that’s before the crazy stuff starts: the sister taunting her with her pregnancy, the infuriatingly perfect boyfriend, the multiple trips to the emergency room. The needy, wise-beyond-her-years little girl fi nding places in her heart that Beck didn’t even know existed.

Beck has found herself at an emotional intersection she never anticipated. And now it’s time to cross the street.

“…at once a love story, a cautionary tale, and an inspirational journey.” ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Award Finalist, American Salvage, and critically acclaimed Once Upon a River,and Mothers, Tell Your Daughters

“With tenderness, but without blinking, Linda K. Sienkiewicz turns her eye on the predator-prey savannah of the young and still somehow hopeful.” ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the #1 NY Times Bestseller,Deep End of the Ocean